Five Benefits of a Great SEO

When you’re conducting business online, the importance of SEO can’t be overestimated – a carefully planned SEO strategy is the best guarantee to ensure your position in Google’s search results. If your SEO strategy isn’t up to par, it’s a given that you’ll end up buried low in the search results, and that’s not where you want to be.

However, SEO is a tough subject to master; it requires time and effort like no other digital marketing strategy. Of course, SEO brings with it its unique benefits with experts claiming that SEO was, is and will forever be one of the best sources of traffic that you can get for your website and business.

Below are five benefits of having a great SEO:

Increased Traffic – Top positions on the search engine result pages receive a majority of the impressions and clicks, so ranking in these top positions can result in significant traffic increases for your website. SEO also focuses on creating informative and keyword relevant title tags and meta descriptions, which show up in the result pages. Having optimized tags and descriptions helps to increase click through rate, which also promotes increases in qualified web traffic.

ROI – SEO provides trackable and quantifiable results, regardless of whether you are an ecommerce or non-ecommerce site so there are no qualms when it comes to ROI. SEO agencies are able to track nearly every aspect of their strategy, like increases in rankings, traffic and conversions. Comprehensive analytics also provide the ability to drill down at a granular level and see demographic information and other engagement metrics for individuals who have interacted with your website.

Cost effectiveness – SEO is one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies because it targets users who are actively looking for your products and services online. SEO’s inbound nature helps businesses save money as opposed to outbound strategies like cold-calling. While cold-calling can still be an effective strategy, the leads generated cost 61% more than leads generated by an inbound strategy like SEO. And since SEO also targets users who are actively searching for products and services like yours, the traffic resulting from SEO is more qualified than many other marketing strategies, resulting in cost-savings for companies.

The Benefit Of Increased Visibility In Search Engines. The most commonly known advantage to be seen in SEO is an obvious increased visibility in search engines.

Great SEO leads to increased credibility for your brand. Ranking highly in the search results signals to searchers that you’re a key player in your industry. Conversely, ranking on the 2nd or 3rd page may lead to unwanted assumptions: that you’re a new business, that you’re not as well known or that you don’t have the budget (and thus sales) to afford to boost your rankings

Improving Customer Satisfaction

Customer satisfaction is the measurement of how happy your customers are. Improving customer satisfaction will help you increase revenue, reduce churn, boost customer lifespan and create more advocates. According to new report from CFI Group, customer satisfaction levels have experienced a slight decline over the past year. Data compiled from consumers across various sectors reflects a customer satisfaction score of 68 (out of 100), a four-point decline from the previous year.

This year’s reading is the lowest score since the report was first issued and it represents the uphill climb many companies face in satisfying increasingly demanding consumers. As it is Customer Service week here in Nigeria, I will be bringing you some tips to improve your customers’ satisfaction with your brand

Our golden rule: never say no to a customer. If a customer service rep can’t deliver a solution for the customer, they escalate this to their team lead, so strategically we can resolve the root cause.

Be positive… Let them see your smile even through the phone. A positive experience and a customer care representative that leaves a positive experience will go a long way. Customers can hear in your voice that you are smiling – it’s hard for a lot of people to be angry when the person on the other end of the phone is happy.

Listen to those that are dissatisfied and act on their advice when it rings true. Find out as much detail as possible. Maybe the problem started on Twitter and has now taken an email and 2 phone calls. How can you improve overall, not just the end problem?

Put the customer at the heart of your decisions and take a balanced approach. Be focused on problem solving, not on the process.

Be precise and clear in your Terms & Conditions and customer communication, so you control the expectations you create. Keep your promises.

If management is mostly about the processes, schedules and targets, leadership is mostly about behaviour. So, train team leaders, not team managers. Facilitate leadership sessions to train your team leaders to understand leadership styles, behaviours, decisions and reputation. This is key to them becoming successful and respected leaders. Good team leaders support their teams to perform and develop and thus get the best results possible from their team members.

Treat your customers like they are your boss. With no customers, there’s nobody to pay you! By taking this approach to every customer interaction you can naturally flip the angle on customer service.

Did you know that 91% of your unhappy customers will never purchase services from you again? Measuring customer satisfaction can help you reduce the number of unhappy customers.

No business is immune to unhappy customers. In fact, even companies with the best customer service in the world will still lose up to 9% of their customers to competitors. The good news is you can do something to stop customers defecting. Here are three common customer retention mistakes that are killing your customer satisfaction:

You are ignoring customer feedback

You are taking customer feedback to personally

You are using long, boring customer feedback surveys

Make Employee Satisfaction a Priority. Simply put, when your employees are happy, they can provide better customer service. Studies have proven that employees often perform better at the jobs when they feel appreciated.

While there’s no one solution for improving customer satisfaction levels, the key is to develop a customer-centric mindset that will help inform decisions and company direction.

WhatsApp is the online instant messaging application for mobile devices that has revolutionised the way we communicate with colleagues and friends. WhatsApp was acquired in 2014 by Facebook at a cost of $ 19 billion and is a total success in terms of use and diffusion. Today, the app has over 1.2 billion active monthly users, 42 billion messages sent per day, and is available in 53 languages.

This powerful application allows video, audio, image, and text messages all through the internet. With more than 250 million daily shared videos, WhatsApp is the leading instant messaging application.The WhatsApp service is currently used in 109 countries. 70% of WhatsApp users use the app on a daily basis. Each day 100 million voice calls and 55 million video calls are made. 175 million people actively use the WhatsApp Status function.

It goes without saying that WhatsApp’s potential as a marketing tool is huge – it’s a platform where brands can connect with a massive global audience. WhatsApp can be a great tool for engagement and relationship building if used for customer service. Quicker response times and personal B2C interaction will only add to customer satisfaction.

WhatsApp works when there is an internet connection, which saves costs when it comes to contact a team member who is not in the office. With WhatsApp, communication is instantaneous and it is possible to even create groups to interact and share business updates, regardless of the location of the other team members.

As a small business owner, what better tool to serve your customers than the one that everyone is using? Your client will prefer to send a message through this app than to call your customer service number or to contact you via email.

It is an excellent channel to keep in touch with your customers on a more personal level. WhatsApp allows you to send short messages: from images to video and audio files related to your products.

The open rate for WhatsApp messages is 70 percent. So instead of calling customers for feedback, you can create questions for your group that will deliver answers that are relevant to your business. This is marketing research at its best, and it is free. With the feedback you receive from your customers, you can respond to their requests and improve the products and services you provide.

With the new Status feature, you can create special promotional codes your customers can share to redeem at your business. Using the instant photo and location feature, Status can let everyone in your group know about the promotions you are running. This could include a two hour flash sale or a one day special to drive in traffic and create buzz. Based on interaction levels, you can expand the promotion with WhatsApp-Status exclusive coupons or promotions.

The instant interaction capability of Status means you can provide special access to events you are holding and send a live feed. If you have a special guest chef in your restaurant, a musician in your music store or a renowned architect in your firm, you can share this news with your audience.

WhatsApp, as a communication tool, continues to evolve and add more features — like Status — with more likely in the future. It is a versatile platform that lets you send files, images, and short video clips about your products and services.

But the key to using WhatsApp effectively is to avoid abusing the relationships you build with your audience these. Measure your interactions so each message you send has value. Don’t make every conversation about making a sale. Remember other users have the power to delete your message with a single click.

Give your brand a Personality via InstaStories

Instagram Stories or as i like to call them, Instastories, allows users to post multiple streams of photos and videos in a slideshow format to create their unique “story” for that day. Like Snapchat, the content is ephemeral so content posted in Stories will disappear after 24 hours however, the difference between InstaStories and Snapchat is that new stories in the home feed are sorted by who you interact with most, not according to the time stories have been updated. Content posted via Stories does not appear on your regular Instagram profile grid or feed. As a brand, you can add flavor to your Stories content using text and drawing tools to show more of your brand’s personality. Read below the ways to show your brand’s personality via InstaStories.

Instagram Stories provides new opportunities for businesses to bolster relationships with their followers, humanise their brand and get fans involved. Instagram Stories is the perfect outlet to showcase more of your brand personality, helping to build that “know, like and trust” factor. how have you defined your brand? Do you use specific colours, tones, or moods? What’s the tone of voice you use in your other marketing?

One of the best ways to get fans involved in your brand is through Instagram contests. Get them active in your stories by encouraging them to send messages as a contest where their answers could win them a prize. Make it a regular event so they return to your Stories on a consistent basis.

Also, you can use both still photographs and videos to create Instagram stories. Your videos don’t have to be anything spectacular. In fact, videos can be a great way to show your audience a unique view of the day-to-day happenings at your business.

In addition, use Stories to expand on a recent post shared on your feed by giving followers behind-the-scenes access to your event. Sharing a continuous stream of visual content that provides more depth can add another layer to your content and help bring it to life, giving your followers more ways to connect with your brand.

Instagram Stories can also be used as an additional outlet to creating campaigns that build awareness about upcoming events or new product launches. Each day provides a new opportunity to create promotional content for your next big thing with Stories, and you’ll never overwhelm your followers feed with your messaging.

Combine interviews and other tactics to tell an engaging story to highlight company events and milestones. Your business probably has more stories than you realise. Treating them like exciting events is a great way to humanise your brand and keep your customers interested in what you do.